How to change matching field without affecting previous matching

[RDmitchell]

Here is the use case:

User has imported files matching on a field that worked to do the desired merging between records in those files.

• An example would be matching on PM Property ID for a few years to get a building list developed

But going forward, they no longer want to match on those fields, and now have another field they want to match on.

• An example would be after creating the building list above matching on PM Property ID, the jurisdiction generates their own building IDs (or UBIDs) and ONLY want to match on that ID going forward.
  • One reason to ditch PM Property ID after it is used to generate a base list of buildings, is that if a building changes ownership, many times the PM Property ID will change. So it is much better to have the building owner enter the jurisdiction's building ID in ESPM and use that to match records going forward.
• They want to keep the state of the records that were previously merged on PM Property ID, but now have added an ID to those records, and want to only match on that ID from now on.

So I guess the requirement is

• Allow the user to change the matching field without affecting the matchingmerging of existing records.

Right now, changing the matching field causes the program to undo the previous matching and remap all the imported data on the new field, which is not the desired outcome in this case.

[RDmitchell]

This is another issue where I don't have a clear vision of how to implement this

And it might be useful to talk to users, particularly experienced ones, to see what they think of this idea, ie, is it useful, etc.

I can think of at least one jurisdiction who has done exactly what I have outlined above, and would want to use this functionality

[github-actions[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity within 60 days. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[github-actions[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity within 60 days. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[github-actions[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity within 60 days. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[RDmitchell]

@kflemin / @nllong / @axelstudios -- I know that we have changed the program so that you can't change matching fields, but I think we need to think through the use case presented here. I am pretty sure that some users are going to need to change their mapping fields over time.

This might be something to talk to Clearly Energy about, ie, have they ever come across this use case? Or talk to other SEED users.

I know for some of the jurisdictions that I have supported in the past, they needed to change their mapping fields as their data changed.

[github-actions[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity within 60 days. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[RDmitchell]

@kflemin -- this is an example of a use case where the user needs to change the matching fields after already importing data.

I think we need to think through these use cases, and see if we can figure out what some options might be.